Wintry conditions persist as the spring sports season begins

Monday

Mar 20, 2017 at 9:02 PMMar 20, 2017 at 9:04 PM

Even though it still looks and feels like winter outside, the spring sports season officially began Monday. Teams had to deal with snow on the ground, and will have to deal with bitter cold temperatures expected Wednesday as tryouts progress.

By Matt Cook/Daily News Staff

Even though it still looks and feels like winter outside, the spring sports season officially began Monday.

Teams had to deal with snow on the ground, and will have to deal with bitter cold temperatures expected Wednesday as tryouts progress.

Natick athletic director Tim Collins praised his staff’s ability to work around the weather.

“This is our new reality of starting spring sports indoors,” he said. “We have this crazy gym-scheduling matrix. We use the gym from 2:30 to 10 p.m. and share different spaces. It works for a short time.

“Once we get outside, it really helps because spring sports don’t lend themselves too well to being indoors.”

Collins also noted how three springs ago the area received historic amounts of snow that forced most of the spring teams inside for weeks on end.

“As a league (the bay State Conference), we moved the entire baseball and softball schedules back to almost April break,” he said. “Last year, we looked like we were in good shape and then it snowed Day One. But we were lucky because it did melt pretty quickly.

“This snow is wet and heavy. It’s taking a bit longer to melt.”

According to Collins, schools with turf fields should be in the clear for the most part provided it’s bright outside because the surface will warm relatively quickly.

“I worry about grass teams because if this cold is lingering around, it will delay them,” he said.

In terms of baseball, softball, and even tennis, Collins said, “My guess is we’ll probably have to look in a week or so to see as a league what we might be able to do for our schedules.”

Milford athletic director Peter Boucher likewise said that this is becoming the new normal.

“It looks good in February,” said Boucher. “A week ago, all our head coaches met and we were excited thinking this is going to be great, and then boom, the storm hits.”

Boucher said he was “pleasantly surprised” at how well Milford’s teams were able to conduct tryouts and prepare for the spring season, whether it begins on time or not.

“It brought out a lot of creativity in our coaches and staff, trying to give everybody actionable space to use for today and probably the next couple of days,” he said.

But Boucher also said that bad weather at this time is beginning to become so common that there might have to be some adjustments to the current schedule.

“It’s making me start to think about, should we be changing timelines? It’s not an agenda item, but we’ve talked about it,” he said. “Maybe we’ve got to start talking to other leagues and the MIAA.

“We might need to move spring back a week.”

Framingham athletic director Paul Spear said he and his coaches were able to implement a plan pretty quickly.

“Everything seemed to go smooth,” he said. “We had to move people around. We were ahead of it. All the coaches worked together. We have to wing it for a little while here. Everybody understands what their attitude has to be.”

The Franklin girls lacrosse team will begin its Division 1 East title defense March 30.

“We were inside today in the gym,” said coach Kristin Igoe. “It’s not ideal, but we still got a lot done. We’re hoping to go outside tomorrow because it’s so much different on an open field.”

Igoe said the team still did a run test and did “a ton of stick work,” but couldn’t practice shooting without nets and instead worked on a lot of fundamentals.

“I think a lot of teams are in the same boat,” she said. “It’s not too worrisome. We have Needham our first game, so we have 10 days to prepare for them.”

Milford baseball coach Paul Pellegrini said so far the weather hasn’t been a huge factor in his team’s preparation.

“I’m not going to change any routine,” he said. “Hopefully we’ll scrimmage on Monday against Algonquin. I don’t think it’ll change the kids’ approach.”

Pellegrini also pointed out the similarities from last year.

“It was freezing in March,” he said. “You forget every year, but it appears the same thing happens. The season gets played. The whole league pushed back the start a week and a half last year.

“We’ll use any venue we can.”

Matt Cook can be reached at 508-626-4403 and at mcook@wickedlocal.com. Follow him on Twitter @MattCook_MWDN.